White House turns up heat on Big Tech’s Covid ‘disinformation dozen’

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This statistic comes from the Nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which identified in a report published in March about a dozen people said they were superinformers of vaccine misinformation.

At the time, the CCDH had asked Facebook and Twitter to close all pages managed by these people.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent figure in the vaccine movement, is among the people the CCDH said should be kicked out of social media.

Kennedy’s Facebook page owned by Facebook was closed earlier this year to share uninformed information from Covid-19, Facebook said. However, Kennedy is still allowed to enter Facebook (FB) and has over 300,000 followers on the platform.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nephew of former US President John F. Kennedy and a prominent figure in the anti-vaccination movement, in 2020.

A Facebook spokesman told CNN on Thursday that it explained why Kennedy was kicked out of one of its platforms, but not the other, “We don’t automatically disable accounts in our apps, as accounts can posting different things in our different services “.

When the CCDH report was published in March, Kennedy told NPR that he had become more cautious on Facebook, which according to NPR also accused him of censorship. “I have to post, like, unicorns and pictures of kitten cats there,” he said.

The CCDH said on Friday that 35 social media accounts linked to the people it identified have now been closed, losing 5.8 million followers, but there are still 62 accounts for a total of 8.4 million. of followers.

CNN reported Thursday that meetings between the Biden administration and Facebook have been “tense,” according to a person familiar with the talks.

The person specifically pointed to Kennedy’s Facebook account still active as an example of what some White House officials consider Facebook’s inaction regarding Covid-19’s misinformation by Facebook.

A Facebook spokesman told CNN on Friday that the company had closed some pages and groups belonging to the dozen people identified by the CCDH, but did not say which pages.

A spokesman for Twitter (TWTR) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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